04. Le banquet

After these months of lockdown, these long years of isolation and distancing, a banquet seems more and more like an ideal. It is associated with celebrations and is therefore a natural participant in the spirit of the Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival’s 30^th birthday. Here, the ideal garden is laid out around a table entirely covered with plant life, in full compliance with the principles of forest permaculture: over 125 varieties of edible fruits, plants, leaves and flowers, with sweet, sour, bitter and salty flavours as well as the fifth “umami” taste with the Japanese name, similar to sweet, whose scientifically proven pleasurable effect is still little known in our Western cultures. A series of recipes created by starred Chefs and opening up new horizons for our taste buds is available on this intergenerational table. It height varies from low table to high table by way of dining table, so that everyone can find their right place in accordance with their age and lifestyles.

The table remains a place to meet up, eat, savour, and appreciate new flavours, but most of all it’s a pretext. A pretext for get-togethers, as a family over Sunday lunch or between friends on Friday evenings. A pretext for announcing good news, new departures, new projects, new events in your life, a pretext for presenting a new-born baby or a new friend. A pretext for simply passing the time, talking about your next-door neighbour, hearing the latest gossip or exchanging pleasantries. A pretext for meetings and for love in all its forms.

A pretext for being there, together.

FORMAT ENGINEERS -Camille CHEVRIER, architect-engineer-, Florian DOMINICY, horticulturist, nurseryman, Pauline DOMINICY, fine herbs and edible flowers producer

 

 

Format Engineers is a parametric engineering studio composed of structure designers with a passion for coding, art, design and architecture, and motivated by a determination to reduce the carbon impact of the projects entrusted to them. Research and digital construction are particularly important to them. “Format” is short for Forms and Materials, the studio’s common thread. The team takes pleasure in exploring the use of new materials and ambitious forms. It is this ongoing search for innovation and achievement of balance with ecosystems that drives them. Creating something unique with whatever is available, no matter the scale or subject. Format loves new challenges and puts collaboration and interdisciplinarity at the heart of its DNA. The studio has been lucky enough to collaborate with a great many well-known architects and artists in Europe and across the world. Including for creation of 3D-printed works, compostables for Milan Design Week, committed installations for COP26 in Glasgow, pavilions at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, and construction of a hiking cabin in northern Norway.

Camille Chevrier is an architect-engineer and a member of Format Engineers’ multidisciplinary team. She lives in Bath in England. Before crossing the Channel a few years ago, she grew up in Sologne and studied architecture and then engineering in Nantes, spending almost 7 years alongside the banks of the Loire. These days, her work combines art, design, architecture, mathematics and calculation of structures with complex geometries. She is particularly interested in optimisation of materials in order to reduce structures’ impact on the planet, and also takes a close interest in the often complex relationship between nature and buildings.

Pauline Dominicy was born in La Rochelle and fell in love with nature at an early age – a passion that has never left her. Naturally enough, she decided to train as a landscaper, horticulturist and nursery gardener, and also took a course in business. Several years of study were followed by professional experience in landscaping, 14 years in gardening and then management of the floral decoration of the municipality of Aizenay in Vendée. In 2012, however, she suffered a serious accident that interrupted the career she had mapped out for herself. Years of rehabilitation followed and finally, at the end of the tunnel, the germ of an idea took root, like a little flower in the storm: the daisy that has since become her emblem. She took up writing and self-published her first book “Osons la fleur dans nos assiettes” (Let’s Dare Put Flowers on our Plates), 700 copies of which were printed – a work much appreciated by restaurateurs and the general public alike. She then set up her own company, Le Jardin de Pauline 85, a 2,700-m² garden practicing agroforestry and permaculture. Her speciality: selling fine herbs, edible flowers and wild “surf and turf” collections. Her out-of-the-ordinary products are intended for starred gastronomic restaurants as well as confectioners and bakers. She shares her passion via discovery visits and sampling of flowers and plants in her garden, with a view to initiating visitors, whether well-informed on the subject or otherwise. She also gives occasional lectures on edibles in general. Regional and national media call on her services all year round, so enabling her to extend her popularity and above all educate as many people as possible to appreciate the taste of plants on their plates and combine them in various recipes, sweet and savoury alike.

Florian Dominicy was born in Vendée and was introduced to the world of flowers at an early age. He was only 6 years old when he joined the L’Asphodèle plant-lovers’ association and explored the gardens of France and England with his mum. His passion for Mother Nature stems from those early days. Following an internship at the Les Jardins d’Ecoute s’il Pleut nursery, where he was introduced to the world of ferns, he studied for a professional baccalaureate at the Lycée du Grand Blottereau in Nantes, followed by an Advanced Technician’s Certificate (BTS) at the Higher School of Agriculture in Angers, in a sandwich course with Lepage, the European company specialising in perennial plants. He also carried out an Erasmus Internship at Eden Project, a huge botanical garden enclosed in bubble-like biomes, in Cornwall in England. The world’s biggest greenhouse according to the Guinness Book of Records. His services were then called upon by Marcel Delhommeau, the producer of over 700 fuchsias, annual plants and collectible plants, whose company is located in La Planche (Loire-Atlantique) on a hectare of glass greenhouses. A year spent absorbing a passion that had lasted 50 years was enough for him to take over the remarkable family horticultural business in March 2021. Since then, he has been committed to perpetuating Marcel Delhommeau’s journey by exhibiting his highly unusual plants at various high-prestige plant festivals throughout France. He has been awarded a number of botanical prizes over the year and counts on continuing to acquaint the public with his little wonders.